"The Samba Team and seven kernel hackers have come together with Software Freedom Conservancy to help efforts to ensure compliance with the GPL by those who implement Linux and other GPL software. Richard Hillesley talked to Bradley Kuhn of Software Freedom Conservancy, Jeremy Allison of Samba, and Matthew Garrett, who works in his spare time with the GPL Compliance Project for Linux Developers."

The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is the most widely used free software license. It was originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project.

It is a software license... equally as valid (or invalid) as every other software license on the planet.

It has absolutely nothing to say about how or where you use the software, or how many machines you install it on.

On the contrary, it has plenty to say about these matters. It basically says you can run it wherever you want and install it on as many machines as you want. Just because it is much less restrictive than most other software licenses doesn't change what it is.

If you discount it, then you basically wipe out all copyright, whether digital or physical.

For digital, yes. But physical objects don't apply, because most of them are not copyable. But when (not if) somebody creates a Star Trek-style replicator and you can clone a loaf of bread and infinite amount of times, are we then going to set up laws that says people can't copy a loaf of bread? I am simply pointing out the lunacy of trying to use the legal system to prevent people from copying something that is infinitely copyable. Mind you, I'm speaking on pragmatic terms, not trying to give some sort of moral justification for piracy.

You reasoning is a bit odd. You claim since some licenses are bad and some are good, we should so away with them all. Thats anarchy. Now if you are advocating anarchy then fine. But its not a reasonable or realistic view to take of the world. Even the worst third world crap holes have some rules.

What I am saying is that if we accept one type of software license, we must by extension accept them ALL. As long as we're allowing developers to make the rules, we can't say that some developers are allowed to dictate the terms by wich their software can be used and/or distributed and some aren't allowed to do this, just because some developers set up terms that are more restrictive than you would like. Thus I think it is logical to not allow developers to make the rules anymore, since most of their rules end up being detrimental to end-users anyway. In essence, we've set up a system where developers have 100% of the control, and it ain't right. It's like being sold a car, and then being told where you're allowed to drive it. Sure, some dealers may be less restrictive about this than others, and some might even say 'drive it wherever the hell you want.' I'd just assume not let dealers make these decisions in the first place.